The redbuds bloom and my love is having pizza with a friend

The redbuds bloom and my love is having pizza with a friend, Desmond 

is home sick, and I am supposed to be editing a video but can’t bring

myself to open the file. Melissa texts to say she’s lying in the sun,

“behind the little gazebo,” she says. It is spring. Anything that can be

planted is planted. Axios says “consumers are in a foul, foul mood,”

and NPR says “Women are getting most of the new jobs. What is going

on with men?” Men don’t want to work in healthcare. I check the accrued

interest on my student loans, knowing I’ll never pay them back, knowing

money is real but also largely a collective act of imagination. I consider

a nap, read a little Maurice Blanchot, read some of E’s poems in translation,

do everything but work. I have not had Ritalin for two days. The hello kitty sticker

on my phone peels off. Elation at the thought of travelling alone. Small flirtations

and my pile of unpaired socks. Does Blanchot say anything about how close

or far away the disaster feels. There is no distance in the index, but: “Expression

of infinitude, expression of nothing: do these go together? Yes, but without

Agreement.” Consumers are morose and depressed, but I have the impression 

that it will not impact our spending very much. The Uber driver tells me she was

over on Foxhall road the other day and gas was above six dollars a gallon.

It’s almost time to fill up. My boss says her power is out and I say, ‘oh no!

Good luck,” then wonder if that was a kind of faux pas. I should have said

“Hope it comes back on soon,” or something like that. The little talons of

baby bluebirds. Desmond gifts several brainrots to other Roblex players.

Hilton asks me to imagine a summer vacation where I relax in bed with a

lover and order room service. Desmond drank gallons of Gatorade yesterday

and I swear I heard a Charlie XCX song where she talks about being a demon 

slayer but that was obviously wishful thinking. It’s the end of the world

in the film Sirāt, and one of the characters says that “It’s been the end of 

the world for a long time,” but she says it in French or Spanish. Furled

sails bound securely to the spar. I have to look up what a spar is, and it seems

like a spar is just a generic word for mast, but a spar can be a boom, gaff,

yard or bowsprit, too. It’s been a while since I’ve read Moby Dick. Broken

spars. It’s the kind of material, fragmented vocabulary that fits the novels’

concern with bodies, objects and disassembly. A splintered spar is what

remains when systems fail. I’m at my desk in my bedroom, looking out

the window at my overwintered swiss chard. That’s the kind of life I’m

living. The whole family needs to get passport photos this weekend.

Booking the travel will be easy, but I’m afraid of the paperwork. I haven’t been 

without a passport since I was a baby and I don’t intend for it to continue.

The neighbour blasts Go-Go music. Blanchot says that “We do not repel 

the earth, to which, in any event, we belong; but we do not make of it a refuge…”

The designs for Trump’s stupid, fucking 250-foot arch here in D.C. have been

released, and it looks like a cheesy Arc De Triomphe, which kind of fits with 

the architecture and layout of this city, but I hate it, of course. This is a no-win

situation. I want to call it quits. To dismiss these gestures as gestures, but it’s

all I can think about. I’m looking for a resolution, and there is none, but the poem

has to end. I pay my parking tickets. The cool breeze and ambient traffic noise

off Eastern Avenue come through my window. I want to undergo some kind of

radical transformation, but I’m fighting just to stay awake, just to write these words.